roachboy

say hello to the elephant in the room:

Home | Costs of War


this is a new study from the eisenhower research project at brown raises some of the main issues that seem to have been more or less swept under the rug by the kind of structured collective amnesia that we live under, an attempt to maintain system legitimacy in the face of a legacy of absolute incompetence.

on the wars themselves, it's a sad state of affairs:

no-one in power has an interest in anything like an accurate accounting of the various levels of costs that follow from the various military debacles that the united states was launched into by the right.

no-one in power has an interest in the questions of why these wars were undertaken in the first place.

no-one in power has an interest in posing questions about the costs in terms of civil liberties of these debacles.

no-one in power has an interest in holding those who initiated these debacles accountable for their actions.

no-one seems to have an interest in holding the right in general accountable.

no-one seems to have an interest in holding the democratic party accountable for caving in to the right.

no-one seems to have an interest in holding congress accountable for capitulating to the bush administration, for abrogating their oversight function.

no-one seems to have an interest in facing reality at all.

at the same time, there is a largely meaningless debate about the national debt being orchestrated in congress that's meaningless because all of these military debacles are off the table. it's likely that is the case because the interests which profit from these debacles form the core patronage system favored by the right. but it is a breakdown of considerable proportions that there **no-one** is introducing this information.

the idea behind this report was to make public basic hard data to do with these issues with the idea of perhaps changing the debate.

what do you make of the report?
does the data surprise you? why is that?
do you think this will change the debate over what "fiscal responsibility" could possibly mean?
if not, what will keep it off the table?
what possible meaning could the debate have without these actions being figured into them?

for the record, i see this as a problem of plutocracy more than as a partisan matter.

i hold the right entirely responsible for afghanistan and iraq. there is no way around it. they are cluster-fucks of epic proportion and there's no obvious way out.

i also hold the obama administration responsible for being weak in their pursuit of ways out and---especially---for obstructing any moves to hold the bush administration legally accountable for their actions.

it's possible to do just anything, including what is arguably the worst war crime (if one takes the nuremberg standards seriously) of launching unprovoked wars of aggression if in so doing you place the legitimacy of the american plutocracy itself at stake. it's a kind of impunity that follows from it.

which is beyond sad.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

The Republicans haven't been fiscal conservatives for decades. Any Republican criticism of Obama is a criticism of how he's handling what is, in large part, a mess of their making.

I mentioned this while Obama took office: it is like taking over driving a car that's already heading over a cliff. There is only so much the new driver can do in reaction to what is already a reckless and devastating situation. If the car does indeed go over and crashes into a burning heap, Obama and the Democrats are hardly deserving of most of the blame.

If the Republicans want lessons on fiscal conservatism, they should look at the governance of the Conservative Party of Canada. Though their methods are often questionable, their goals are as close to fiscal conservatism as one should expect.

George W. Bush wasn't a fiscal conservative. He had the opportunity to balance budgets, but he decided to play war instead. That makes him a war hawk. I can't think of any modern Republican president that even remotely resembles the fiscal leadership of the current Conservative Party. I'd really like to compare apples to apples—you know, conservatives to conservatives—but this comparison feels awkward.

The Republican Party is in shambles. They're destructive and need to regroup and jettison the worst of them. Failing that, the best thing for America is to avoid handing them any meaningful power of office.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

i agree with most of that---but the problem here runs beyond the limits of the two right wings that dominate the american single-party state to implicate the legitimacy of the system itself.

i'm tied up with some stuff for the moment, but stumbled across this article from the independent (uk) that addresses this study. the headline says it all:

'War on terror' set to surpass cost of Second World War - Americas, World - The Independent

check out the infographic linked at the top of the article.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

samcol

I don't even know what to say anymore really. Sure the republicans started this whole mess, but the democrats don't do a thing to stop them.

And now Obama commits an impeachable offense buy attacking Libya unprovoked without congressional approval.

How is it you hold the right solely responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan? Democrats voted for it too and continue to vote to fund these wars. The blood is just as much on their hands.

I find it interesting that the only viable anti-war candidate is Ron Paul. There is no one else who has demonstrated their will to end the wars in both their rhetoric and actions.

A vote for Democrats is more war, a vote for Republicans is more war. What are we to do?

I do agree with you though that talks about getting the national debt are pointless so long as we continue these indefinite wars.

__________________
It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

roachboy

i hold both parties responsible, really. that's one of the points i was trying to make: it is empirically the case that the afghanistan and iraq debacles---which are by far the most costly of the 3 debacles---were republican products that were enabled by a breakdown in congressional oversight in my view---but i opposed all of this stuff from day one, the whole sham "war on terror"

but it is also the case that the obama administration has not moved fast enough or effectively enough to get the united states out of the republican-engendered cluster fucks in either place.

and it is the case that obama has in a general sense pursued foreign policies that move in a straight line from that of the bush people, despite all the talk about change, and that he has done so from a position of imperial president that is, if anything, more radical than was that adopted by the bush administration (e.g. blowing off the advice of his own internal legal counsel on the status of the libyan intervention).

i don't particularly buy the equation of libya with the other wars, however, because it was managed in an entirely different way---witness the relatively small role the united states is taking in what is primarily a NATO operation for better or worse.
and this to leave aside for the time being questions about the situation in libya, about which it is safe to say that nothing has gone as hoped/planned at the outset.

i do hold the bush administration responsible, however. it is peculiar that, given what is empirically the case, that there's any argument about that responsibility.

that i think the iraq war is in itself a war crime is a point for debate, perhaps another time.

the attempts on **both** sides of the aisle in the single-party state that is the united states to keep these massive drains on the economy off the table is surreal. a tragedy, really.

ugh...have to go do some more work stuff.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

samcol

How are we supposed to stop this insane military industrial complex? When voting doesn't rectify the situation, what is the next step?

It's getting to the point of having massive demonstrations or having citizen 'filibusters' in attempt to totally shut down the government until they listen I guess.

It's been nearly 10 years of this bullshit. I want to put an end to it but have no idea how.

__________________
It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Baraka_Guru

At this point, the only viable option would seem to be something disruptive, something outside of the status quo.

In light of the Arab Spring, there perhaps should be an American Spring.

Conservative or liberal? It doesn't matter. What matters is that something has got to give. The worst thing would be to wait until economic collapse.

It seems to me that Americans are too indifferent about the wars. Do they really feel that powerless?

Here is some recent news north of the border: CTV Ottawa- Last Canadian combat troops leaving Afghanistan - CTV News

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

i agree with you entirely about the magnitude of the problem and our seeming powerlessness to do anything about it within a political system that allows us to be free for one day every 4 years.

my sense is that the present apparatus is in significant trouble structurally speaking.
i haven't quite figured out how to talk about it really---that sense is at the origin of the things i write like collapse of empire, crisis of empire.

there's something happening and one indication of it is the profound ideological paralysis that seems to afflict most people---this including the folk with power inside the governmental machine, who are not outside. i see most of the populist right as little more than a direct expression of this paralysis---but in situations that aren't debate oriented i have no problem saying that the populist right is simply the most obvious in its paralysis----it has no monopoly on it.

what's peculiar is the extent to which facts as massive as those outlined in this report have been kept off the table.

what is hopeful-making, in a general sense, is the actions of people in tunisia, in egypt and elsewhere in north africa/middle east---with varying degrees of success--in acting against the national-security state model. and those in greece and spain and elsewhere in europe acting against the lunacy of neo-liberalism.

i think we may be heading into a period of renewed radical political activity. that possibility is what keeps me heading back into this sort of question, finding new information and trying to raise the problems again.


but i definitely feel the sense of limited options...and not a sense of any real freedom. more a soft authoritarian state we live in. but that's another matter.,

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

samcol

The thing that worries me about these types of revolutions we've seen in other countries is that a lot of people get hurt or killed.

With the increasing police state around the country since 9/11, these types of revolutions don't sound very appetizing either. Not to mention it only takes a couple idiots with guns on either side of the fence to 'escalate' things.

__________________
It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Baraka_Guru

Well, I foresee any American action as hopefully more peaceable regarding the avoidance of violence. Non-violent protest can and often should be disruptive. If you get enough people involved, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the status quo.

Many major shifts in society or politics happen this way. It is unfortunate that violence often comes to some degree a part of the process. But also consider the dire consequences of the status quo running into such things as economic collapse. What of violence then?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

aceventura3

From the report:

The bias and limitations have been clearly stated. Drawing broad conclusions from what was presented can be a bit problematic. There is no doubt that war has its costs. These wars have not been unilateral and to continue that mythology is naive at best.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

this study set out to compile information about the economic, human, social and political costs of the travesty that has been the "war on terror" brought to us by the bush administration which turned it into such a disaster that there's no obvious way out of it for the moderates in the obama administration---who, sadly, accepted the idea that there was something legitimate about this travesty at its core.

but the disasters the republicans visited upon the people of iraq, the people of afghanistan and pakistan---have not been dismantled by the obama administration.

maybe if you read real slow, you'll pick up on this:

the costs of these travesties has been kept off the table by both sides.

the onus, however, is on the republicans---on the right---on people like you---because yours is the political position that caused afghanistan and iraq and bungled both.

and that's a big part of the reason the right still doesn't want to address this: you've had to run away from your own history over the past 10 years to remain a viable political formation at all. and the right is still trying to run from itself.

bringing up the costs of these wars goes some distance toward undermining that politically motivated amnesia.

this information also undermines the right's ludicrous attempts to position obama as anything other than a centrist.

hell, even that neo-fascist dick cheney has endorsed much of obama's "war on terror" follies as if being trapped by an epic clusterfuck and struggling to get out of it situations of such monumental catastrophe (iraq) that there's no way justifies the clusterfuck.
it's no wonder that you try to swat the report away. the stakes are high for the right in keeping information at bay.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite